COVID is back — at least, that is what Americans are supposed to believe.
This time, however, as a slight increase in COVID cases fuels talk of reimposing mask mandates, some Republicans are taking a stand.
This week, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) introduced the Freedom to Breathe Act, which would prevent the federal government from instituting mask mandates in public schools, universities, and on public transportation, including airplanes and buses. (READ MORE: Sure. Try Bringing Back the Masks. This’ll Be Fun.)
“Multiple entities within our government, within the public health bureaucracy — there are local schools in the D.C. area — now reimposing mask mandates, this is coming back unless we stop it from happening,” Vance said on Wednesday. “Say ‘No more mask mandates.’ Let’s make it bipartisan,” he urged fellow congressmen.
On Thursday, the bill was denied unanimous consent.
The bill would have been valid for just 15 months, until Dec. 31, 2024, and would not have applied to healthcare sectors. It also would have allowed individuals to continue voluntarily masking.
Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) objected to the bill on the Senate floor on Thursday, arguing that “it would silence and hamstring public officials” and claiming that local healthcare officials should be able to make decisions about vaccines and masks. “We have to provide the options for our healthcare heroes to save lives,” Markey said. (READ MORE: American Despotism)
Vance’s bill comes after a number of institutions have imposed mask mandates in response to growing COVID numbers, including a public elementary school in Montgomery County, Maryland, which made headlines after a letter to parents was published on social media earlier this week.
The letter, from Rosemary Hills Elementary School, concerned students who had attended a class in which “3 or more individuals have tested positive for COVID-19.” The school informed parents that it would be providing COVID testing kits and would require exposed students and staff to wear N-95 masks. The students are allegedly in third grade.
Mask mandates have also been reinstated at a healthcare facility in California and Lionsgate’s Hollywood studio in Santa Monica, California. San Francisco health care and jail employees are also being required to mask up.
Meanwhile, governors across the U.S. have promised not to reimpose mask mandates and lockdowns, including Arkansas Gov. Sarah Sanders and South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster.
“As talk of mask mandates and closures kick up across the country, I can assure the people of South Carolina we will not have mask mandates, we will not close schools, and we will not lock down,” McMaster said on X.
As talks of mask mandates and closures kick up across the country, I can assure the people of South Carolina we will not have mask mandates, we will not close schools, and we will not lock down. pic.twitter.com/GlKgy8AhMi
— Gov. Henry McMaster (@henrymcmaster) September 7, 2023
In an op-ed for Fox News Thursday, Vance stated that mask mandates not only failed to protect Americans from COVID but were actually harmful to their health:
There is no robust high-quality evidence that masking slows the spread of respiratory infections like COVID-19. But it can lead to unhealthy levels of CO2 inhalation, jeopardize early childhood development, and exacerbate speech and language disorders. In most cases, a mask is nothing more than a false sense of protection.
As Vance pointed out on the Senate floor on Thursday, more than one million Americans died from COVID in spite of widespread mask mandates, not for lack of them.